SUMMARY: Many dental care items claim to focus on the odors associated with halitosis, but for the most part they cannot bust the smell at its source. Of course, maintaining good oral hygiene is key to keeping breath bearable, but it isn’t everything. Specialty breath fresheners that use stabilized chlorine dioxide may bridge the gap between bearable and truly fresh.

Posted: December 21, 2010

Many dental care items claim to focus on the odors associated with halitosis, but for the most part they cannot bust the smell at its source. Of course, maintaining good oral hygiene is key to keeping breath bearable, but it isn’t everything. Specialty breath fresheners that use stabilized chlorine dioxide may bridge the gap between bearable and truly fresh.

Brushing your teeth and flossing are key to preventing oral diseases that cause chronic bad breath, such as tooth decay, gingivitis and periodontitis. However, even without these dental afflictions in the picture, bad breath is still a reality for more than half of Americans. This is where chlorine dioxide can help.

Stabilized chlorine dioxide can sometimes be found in specialty breath freshening kits. Chlorine dioxide itself, when unstabilized, acts as a bleaching agent. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 95 percent of industrial chlorine dioxide is used for one thing – bleaching wood pulp for paper. When stabilized and used in a mouth rinse, it can significantly reduce halitosis.

The results are even measureable – an instrument called a halimeter measures the amount of volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) on the breath. A 2003 study in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology, for instance, found that participants’ measured amounts of VSCs decreased by almost half with just one week of use.